Abstract:

The paper investigates the prevalence of market orientation in insurance industry in Malawi. It is a well-known fact that market orientation improves business performance because all the right actions relating to the market and consumers are well thought through. This being a behaviour construct requires the top leadership to be fully involved and walk the talk in leading the organization to drive the marketing agenda.

The study aimed to find out the status of the insurance companies on market orientation while at the same time checking the influence of top leadership in the implementation of the marketing concept, a prerequisite for market orientation.

MARKOR scale for assessing market orientation was used bearing in mind that some of its constructs review the cultural angle thereby revealing employee behaviour towards their drive to live and or implement the marketing concept. Survey was conducted in one insurance company under the case study research methodology using simple random sampling. Primary data collection was complemented with qualitative in-depth interviews at the same company. Analysis was done using SPSS tool version 20.

The findings reveal that insurance companies in Malawi are market oriented. In addition, top leadership has strong influence on market orientation. Some shortfalls were identified for companies to work on to correct these shortfalls in order to achieve high-level market orientation.

Keywords: market orientation, insurance marketing, marketing concept, top leadership and market orientation, influence of top leadership, insurance sector in Malawi.

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